SIPEC: the deep-learning Swiss knife for behavioral data analysis

Abstract

Analysing the behavior of individuals or groups of animals in complex environments is an important, yet difficult computer vision task. Here we present a novel deep learning architecture for classifying animal behavior and demonstrate how this end-to-end approach can significantly outperform pose estimation-based approaches, whilst requiring no intervention after minimal training. Our behavioral classifier is embedded in a first-of-its-kind pipeline (SIPEC) which performs segmentation, identification, pose-estimation and classification of behavior all automatically. SIPEC successfully recognizes multiple behaviors of freely moving mice as well as socially interacting nonhuman primates in 3D, using data only from simple mono-vision cameras in home-cage setups.